Silver Dragon Song
by Morgan Coldsoul
Summary: Follow the youth of a legend as a foundling human is raised by an elven sorcerer, to discover that he is destined for things only gods can imagine. Rated PG for descriptions of battle (nothing really gory, though).
1. In Which Illidian Finds A Young One

Morgan: All right, here's the first installment of my first fanfic.  
  
Moomba Fanboy: Woohoo!  
  
Morgan: Quiet, Chuchiru! Please read and review this, since feedback early on will help me to give you more of your (hopefully) favorite new characters later. As far as I know at this point, the entire cast of this fic will be OCs. There may or may not be cameos by famous NPCs like Drizzt, Alustriel, Alias, the Lady of Pain, etc., but I'm not sure yet. Why don't you, as the audience, decide? I'm writing this for no other reward than your pleasure, after all.  
  
Chuchiru: Liar! You want fame, money, and a bevy of immoral young women to attend to your every whim!  
  
Morgan: (clamps a hand over moomba's mouth desperately) Nannari! At any rate, this is how it should run: It'll start in the Forgotten Realms, in the Moonwood region, and most of the adventure will take place there throughout the "quest," or whatever. There'll be many a trip into the Planescape setting, though, so be warned: while I don't yet know whether there will be any chapters labeled "Not For Kiddies," the major part of the story will definitely have a rough, jagged, sharp, rusty, tetanus-ridden, serrated edge on it. Now that you've been sufficiently notified... On with the fic!  
  
Chuchiru: Mmrrfg hmpfrumfgr mpf hrfmfrhg... (Translation-- "Air...becoming...an issue...")  
  
Note: * * * indicates section break indicates inner monologue, thoughts  
  
* * * (Tsujitsuma mou! ^_^ )  
  
Illidian Peridruin knelt, wiping the blood from his long, mithril- bladed spear. Blue fire flickered at its edges, dying in the bloody gleam of the setting sun--fading in the aftermath of battle.  
  
The moon elf sighed. The orcs had been pushed back, slaughtered by the Fair Ones of Moonwood, but several brave elven warriors--men and women he had known for all of his three and a half centuries of life--had died in defense of the forest's borders. Now the rangers and their pegasus mounts would be carried back to the heart of the wood by their remaining brethren, to be laid to rest in the ceremonies of their people.  
  
Illidian looked at his reflection in the broad, now-clean blade of the spear: lean-faced, with gray-green, serious eyes; the angular blue tattoos on his cheeks that were supposed to focus his power as a sorcerer gleaming under his fair skin. His nose was aquiline, his chin firm, his cheekbones high, and his expression weary and grave.  
  
"Always they strike again," he muttered. A passerby may have assumed it was only because there was no one within speaking distance that he spoke to himself, but in truth, he had taken up one-sided conversations to keep himself from descending into the madness many claimed had already engulfed him. The blood of silver dragons ran in his veins, inborn magic that far surpassed--both in potency and limitations--that of a normal mage, even an elvish one; however, perhaps because of it, he was chaotic, irritable, and given to visions and eerie trances. The other elves, as much for their own safety as for their peace of mind, had consigned him to a hermitage several miles away from their settlement, remembering the unexplained magical disturbances and troubles that had occurred during the period of his adolescence. They allowed him to visit the city, but not to live there, and to an elf, the separation from the society can sometimes be more painful than any other wound.  
  
"Always they strike again," he told himself more angrily. "Why haven't they figured it out yet? Every time, we slay them, make them flee, and always they return. Do they not know they cannot best us? In our own homeland? Foolishness."  
  
His line of thought was disturbed suddenly by a shriek of terror, followed by a piteous cry, a wail of grief and loss. He unwound himself from his kneeling position hurriedly, listening with his lobeless, upswept ears for the sound to come again. He was taller than most elves, closer to six feet than five, although he still sported a lean, narrow frame, his muscles lithe like a cat under his shirt of elven-forged chain and brown leather clothing. He cocked his head as the cry pierced the dusk once more.  
  
Racing through the foliage, making no sound, leaving no sign of passage, Illidian followed the thin trill of noise. He emerged from the edge of the Moonwood near the road that passed by that section, to see a pair of orcs awkwardly mounting two fine bay steeds by the wreckage of a human wagon. The body of a young woman lay in the dust of the road, one arm thrown out toward the setting sun, and beside her the corpse of an older, bearded man in half-plate armor and riding leathers. The goblinoids spotted him and, kicking savagely at their mounts' flanks, raced off in terror.  
  
Normally Illidian cared little for humans--he'd had little contact with them during his life--but these orcs were wounded and frightened from the battle that had just claimed some of his people those few minutes to the north. The elf snarled and launched his spear with a smooth, professional overhand cast.  
  
The polearm slid into the back of one orc, sliding through bones and organs like a stick being thrust into a pool of still water. Sapphire flame burst from the spear, searing away a large chunk of the creature's side and panicking its already-wide-eyed mount. The horse reared, throwing its dead rider, and galloped off toward the ridge.  
  
The second orc had one hand pressed to its side to staunch an ugly arrow wound there, and was using the other to flog his horse mercilessly in an attempt to escape. Illidian drew himself to his full height with a feral growl and extended one hand, palm out, fingers splayed. The tattoos on his jaws and the backs of his hands flared with ghostly cerulean radiance, a light matched by the gathering strands of power that swirled about his taut hand. Five missiles of energy burst forward in rapid succession, slicing unerring paths in the cool evening toward the fleeing orc.  
  
The humanoid's eyes bulged as the first bullet of magic struck his lower back. He squealed, swaying in his saddle and trying jerkily to turn around. Another slammed into his shoulder blades, another his leg, and the last two toppled him from his stolen equine with simultaneous blows to the back of the head. He lay in the long grass fifty yards from the road, twitching and groaning.  
  
Illidian had no sympathy for the foul, brutish goblinoid. With a wave of his hand, he unleashed another spell, distorting the air around the creature, drawing the moisture from its thrashing form. The grass shriveled and withered for thirty feet in every direction from the orc, who promptly dried up himself, clawing with skeletal hands at sunken eyes and sloughing into dust and bones on the ground. The last rays of the sun washed over the barren circle as they faded away, illuminating the now-dead ground enough to discern the last of the orc's remains being scattered in a whimsical, early night wind.  
  
The elf held out his hand once more, to recall his enchanted spear this time. The weapon slid free of the first orcish corpse, sailing through the air with a whistle to the waiting grasp of the sorcerer. Illidian turned back to the shattered wagon, giving the two bodies nearby only a cursory glance to make certain they were dead. The vehicle held naught but a sack of meager travel rations, a pack of minor miscellaneous gear he assumed had been the possessions of the grizzled warrior, and a tattered blanket that stirred slightly in the breeze.  
  
The mysterious cry caught at Illidian's heart once more, emanating this time from a discernible location: the small cloth lump of the coverlet. He grimaced, pulling back the corner to reveal something that, for some reason, didn't surprise him at all.  
  
"How cliché," he murmured, looking down at the small, frightened human baby. "Just like I read in all the story-books, yes?" The chubby, pink child couldn't have been more than six or seven months old, with curious fingers despite the tight, terrified expression in his huge blue- green eyes. He caught Illidian's prodding finger eagerly, holding onto it as a drowning man might clutch at a straw, perhaps afraid that to let go was to follow Mommy and Daddy.  
  
No, not a father, that man. The elf peered over his shoulder at the male form sprawled near the butt of his spear. The orcish blades of the fugitives he had just slain made the gaping side a mess, but the face was turned to the side, and nothing of the child was there. The mother was not recognizable. Some other man, most definitively.  
  
Illidian gazed into the baby's eyes for a long time, and the young human stared back. When the elven sorcerer raised one eyebrow, he giggled as though it were all a game. The elf sighed. It is good you forget so quickly; but what now?  
  
"I can't leave you here to die, can I?" he said out loud, smiling. He scooped the babe up in his free hand, rags and all, and turned toward the forest. Behind him, the stars winked down on the dark battlefield of the woods' edge, and Illidian faded into the shadows.  
  
Somewhere, far away, acid-green eyes, pupils slit like a cat's and full of fathomless darkness, closed halfway in a lazy smile. A smile of triumph, of success, of benevolent kindness.  
  
A smile that promised this was only the beginning. 


	2. At Home With Draco

Morgan: (sitting in a puddle of tears) They love me! They really love me!  
  
Chuchiru: Whatever gave you that idea?  
  
Morgan: Do you have any idea how hard it is to get reviews in the D&D section!?  
  
Chuchiru: Um--no?  
  
Morgan: I feel needed, loved, appreciated!  
  
Chuchiru: It'll pass.  
  
Morgan: (wields large fish menacingly) Don't interrupt my fifteen minutes of fame, makeinu!  
  
* * *  
  
Drawing on his power, it took Illidian only a moment to reach his home, moving from the forest loam to a thick tree-branch miles away between one step and the next. Woven into the limbs of the ancient, giant oak was his home, nestled in the first fork, where the many primary branches split from the massive trunk. It was a modest, but large and roomy, house, with rope bridges spanning the distance from the main structure to several secondary rooms that hung on vines from the tree above.  
  
Shifting the curious human child carefully, he placed his palm on the door, whose suddenly visible warding runes flared briefly, then faded. The network of thorny vines that covered the simple wooden door withdrew into the leafy frame, making way for the elven sorcerer to move into his home.  
  
"It's about time you got home," said a voice from a nearby bookshelf as Illidian walked into the parlor. "I was almost ready to send out a search party."  
  
"I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, you arrogant little pustule," the fair one replied cheerfully. "You're not my nursemaid."  
  
"No," the voice agreed, "I'm your better half. I can't afford to let you go lollygaging about as you please without supervision; you're reckless, so it's not the best way to preserve my own skin." With that, a sleek black cat leapt from a space between two books and landed on the floor silently, padding over to Illidian. It seated itself with royal demeanor at his feet, wrapping its tail around its front legs and giving him an expectant look through half-lidded, languid eyes.  
  
"It's not for you, furball," the elf told his familiar tartly, shifting the human baby again. "It's a child, a foundling. I discovered him in the wreckage of a human's wagon after the orc attack. I'm keeping him, because he's too young to fend for himself."  
  
The feline's eyes widened in horror, his slit pupils dilating to occlude his green-golden irises. "You've brought a squalling little curtain-climber into my home without even asking!?"  
  
"Careful, Dhannathach. That description could fit you just as easily." Lightly, the elven sorcerer strode further into the house, back into the single bedroom that was his own. A window shuttered by cooperative leaves opened to admit the night air as he entered, looking about for a place to put the young one in his arms. In a flash of inspiration, he narrowed his eyes, causing the top drawer in the room's single clothes chest to pop open, its contents hurling themselves across the small space to his bed. The now-empty drawer was a convenient place to put the baby, who made no protest as he was gently lowered in.  
  
Illidian squinted. "I suppose it will have to do until I can find something better, yes? A crib or rocker." The baby cooed in response, reaching insistently for his finger. The sorcerer indulgently obliged, handing over the digit, which the child immediately seized on and began to teeth on.  
  
"Darling," Dhannathach muttered. He had followed Illidian into the bedchamber and hopped quietly up onto the chest so as to look into the human's drawer.  
  
"Ka," the baby replied importantly, releasing the sorcerer's hand in favor of reaching for the familiar, who drew back in horror.  
  
"Precocious," Illidian remarked, raising an eyebrow. He sighed, gazing for a long moment out the window, watching the stars twinkle merrily as though mocking the predicament he had leapt into headfirst. "No suggestions, my ancestors?" he asked them sourly.  
  
The stars said nothing. They almost never did.  
  
He turned back to the baby, who had fallen nearly asleep in the few moments he had stopped watching. Dhannathach was leaning into the drawer, snuffling curiously at this creature that was invading his territory.  
  
"That's a good way to get your whiskers pulled." With a grimace, the cat pulled away. "He's going to need a name."  
  
"Pinkums," the black feline suggested immediately.  
  
"Don't be a fool, Dhan. Something that means something, but a human name. If I raise him, he shall grow up among elves, and will need something to connect him to the world he must surely return to one day." Illidian sighed, a premonition settling heavily onto his slender shoulders. "When he learns that he will die long before anyone he knows has begun to age, he will have no choice but to force himself into the human world."  
  
There was a long pause. Then, Dhannathach said, "You're serious about this, aren't you?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"They'll try to prevent it, you know."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"They'll try to take him away from you. A human has no place amongst elves."  
  
Illidian glanced at his familiar, eyes flashing. "Neither do I." He moved to the small bedside table, picking up the only book in his home that was not on a shelf, a collection of human children's stories. For many minutes he gazed at it, boring into its battered, faded cover with his half- mad eyes. Those eyes closed as he decided what he would do, and the book flew open in his hand, its pages turning rapidly, stopping at random in the middle of some chapter close to the end.  
  
The elf looked at the illumination on the page, at the name of the hero slaying the dragon in the aging picture. "Lorimer. He shall be Lorimer."  
  
"Lorimaer," his feline companion agreed, misinterpreting. "A good elvish name."  
  
"Human," he corrected absently. He shut the book. "And Argot. Lorimer Argot, because humans must have surnames."  
  
"Like the common tongue, you mean?"  
  
"Like the jewel. Argots, those eyes are, reflecting what will be, and what may be, and what is now. Lorimer Argot." The name sounded fitting as he tried it, and he nodded, satisfied. He set his book down and stepped back to Lorimer's drawer. "Hello, Lorimer Argot, son of unknown humans, ward of Illidian, who was once of the House of Peridruin."  
  
The child opened his luminous blue-green eyes. "Da," he replied sleepily, lifting a hand towards Illidian. The sorcerer assumed an expression of wonder, clasping the tiny hand in his own. His tattoos lit with a sapphire glow in response to the power that only now did he sense pulsing in those small fingers. His eyes widened.  
  
"Your blood is truly my blood, even if your flesh is not my flesh," he said in awe. "The essence of the silver dragon runs through you; you shine with it! How did I not see?"  
  
Dhannathach looked at him sharply. "He is a sorcerer?"  
  
"He will be. And he will not be Lorimer Argot, a name which gives no credit to those great ancestors whom he will never know." He laid his free hand on the sleepy babe's forehead in a silent benediction. "He will be Draco. Draco Lorimer Argot, son of Illidian Peridruin. My son."  
  
Draco cooed and went back to sleep.  
  
"Sooner than life comes the morn, son of my blood," Illidian whispered, smiling slightly. Leaning down to kiss the child lightly, he murmured, "Ú i vethed nâ i onnad. You shall see."  
  
Softly, as Dhannathach looked on without comment, Illidian began to sing an elvish lullaby. 


	3. Illidian is Wicked Powerful

Morgan: Now, we're getting into the action. After this is where Drake starts to grow up.  
  
Chuchiru: I like him better as a baby.  
  
Morgan: I like you better with your mouth shut, but it just doesn't seem to be writ large in the stars, now does it?  
  
* * *  
  
As Dhannathach predicted, the next morning saw a trio of elven rangers on Illidian's doorstep. Their silver chain mail glinted in the early morning sunlight that shone between the dew-touched leaves of the forest canopy, and their circlets of beaten gold sat regally on their brows, but they held onto the hilts of their swords warily.  
  
"I am trying to feed the baby," Illidian greeted the nervous officer curtly. "Do you have any idea what it's like trying to feed a child this age without a female in the house?"  
  
"I'm sorry, hîr nín," the elven guardsman, who was at least a century younger than Illidian, replied shamefacedly. "Our orders are to present you and the human foundling to the Council immediately, by force if you resist." He looked distinctly uncomfortable as he spoke.  
  
"Oh, really?" Illidian shifted Draco so that he held the boy with only one arm, leaving the other to hang freely at his side in a casual pose. It was an innocuous enough movement, but the elven officer caught the subtle glint in the sorcerer's eyes and swallowed hard. "And just how long do you believe you will continue to live after you attempt to do that, if I may be so bold?"  
  
"Aren't you overreacting a little? It's just a meeting--"  
  
"Wasn't the Council overreacting a little? They just banished me from the city."  
  
The guard captain backed away a step, raising his hands in a defensive gesture. "I'm sure that was for your own protection as well as that of the other citizens, hîr nín--"  
  
The sorcerer gave him a feral snarl, baring his teeth like a tiger about to strike--or a dragon bristling at an offensive morsel. "When they cast me out, however gently they did it, they lost all right to name my own actions for me. The Council is no more than a minor inconvenience--one I can easily ignore, should I choose. I choose to do so now. If those arrogant, self-absorbed, totalitarian dictators want to get a look at the child, they may come here on their knees, yes?"  
  
"Hîr nín," the younger elf objected pleadingly, "you live within the boundaries of the Moonwood, and are thus subject to the Council's will! To deny them is to exile yourself from here forever!"  
  
"To deny them is to throw their own words back into their teeth! They cast me out and forbade me the city, and so am I beyond the reach of their petty mandates! If they want me--or if they want to remove me--they are free to try and make the attempt either way in person." Illidian's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Deliver me this message, as well: Tell your precious Council that any incursion into my territory will be seen as an act of aggression, and that I shall persecute any trespassers I find within my range most extensively. If the cowards still feel that they must see the human youngling, let them come clad in steel--and prayers that such will be enough to stave off my wrath!"  
  
With that, the young elven officer and his two subordinates were suddenly facing a closed door. They could only turn grimly back to their city, to deliver Illidian's message to the Council--and to hear their response.  
  
* * *  
  
That response was fairly predictable. Lord Andelu burst into a string of inventive and highly impressive curses, never ceasing until he finally began to repeat himself. He slammed his fist down on the carven wood of the semicircular council table. "Blast and bebother that sorcerer!" he spat, as the three soldiers stood apprehensively at attention.  
  
"It's not that important, Andelu," the scholarly Lord Hîdh protested. "Let him keep the child."  
  
"You don't understand! The child is human! It cannot be trusted with the secrets of our people. What if it grows to maturity here in the Moonwood, learning our ways and the ways of the Wood, and is then captured by the black orcs of the north? What then!?" Andelu shook his head vehemently. "We have no choice but to take the foundling from the forest and leave it with some human family."  
  
"His point is made well," another council lord spoke up. "We should discuss this before going any further."  
  
"The time for waiting was past when the exile found the child!" Andelu barked. "Now we act!"  
  
Hîdh's chair grated as he rose gracefully, his amber eyes sparking in the sunlight that fell through the stained glass dome of the council chamber. "I do not recall the point at which you began to decide the course of the Council alone, Andelu, but it is not your place. We will debate the issue with the utmost care and reach a consensus, as is our custom."  
  
The other elf's eyes also grew hard. "Are you challenging my authority?"  
  
"I am challenging your competence, you blustering fool! What do you intend to do, hmm? March in force on the sorcerer's abode and lose half our guardsmen to his anger? Think, idiot! This does not need to involve conflict, especially between the Council and Illidian Peridruin."  
  
"Do as you will, then, Hîdh, but I shall act in the interests of Moonwood as I see them, regardless." Andelu turned and swept regally from the room, to the muttering of the other lords.  
  
"Brash fool," Hîdh growled. He snapped his fingers in the direction of the nervous guards. "Make yourselves useful, my friends, and ready the rest of the guard. There is no telling what may happen if Andelu attacks the exile; he could strike back with a flight of dragons, for all we know." He clapped his hands sharply. "Quickly!"  
  
Chewing on his lip dismayedly, Tarvys Edgebark bowed and led his two undercommanders from the hall.  
  
* * *  
  
"They're here," Dhannathach informed Illidian, hopping onto the worktable above Draco's current drawer. The baby giggled and reached for the cat, who dodged him absently.  
  
"I feel them," the sorcerer answered, not looking up from his work. He was busily shaving tracts of wood off of a curved piece of wood with a carpenter's plane, fashioning runners for the cradle he was preparing. A plain headboard and footboard stood against the wall of his workshop, one of the off-rooms of his home in the great tree. They had yet to be carved, but the elf planned an intricate pattern of runes and natural designs for the furnishing.  
  
"If you make them stand out there, they'll just get angry," the familiar warned.  
  
"Let them." He continued the smooth sliding of his plane, grading the runner down until he was satisfied it matched the other he had already prepared. Only when he had tested both of them on the floor next to each other did he make his way down the steps, fashioned from the living wood of the branch, and into the main building, where he opened the door to reveal a red-faced and spluttering Lord Andelu.  
  
"Oh," he said blandly, "it's you. What do you want?"  
  
Andelu managed to compose himself to some degree, attempting to keep a civil edge on his tone. "I have come for the child. You would not bring him before the Council for a review as we requested, and so I am acting on behalf of the Council to remove him to a human habitation outside of our borders." He held forth one hand in a demanding gesture.  
  
Illidian's gaze never left his eyes. "I don't give a flaming phoenix pinion whether you're acting on behalf of Corellon Larethian himself," the sorcerer replied. "The child stays with me. You lost all claim on my loyalty when you threw me into banishment at the rear end of the Wood."  
  
"Then you leave me no choice," Andelu said, a look of near-relish coming into his eyes. He raised his hand, and the archers who had been positioned behind him stood and nocked their yard-long arrows. "Tangado a chadad!"  
  
Illidian smiled.  
  
"Hado i philinn!" Andelu brought his arm down with a sharp motion.  
  
Illidian smiled.  
  
"What's the matter!?" the lord snapped, whirling on his archers. "Togo hon dad! Dago hon!" He stopped, his jaw dropping.  
  
Illidian smiled.  
  
All ten of the marksmen Andelu had brought with him were suspended in the air, relieved of their weapons, struggling vainly against the unseen force that held them from the surface of their arboreal highway.  
  
"Put them down!" the council lord commanded, turning to face Illidian once more. "What have you done!?"  
  
"Less than you would have done, yes?" the sorcerer sneered. "Now, you will listen to me, 'Lord' Andelu, and you will do as I say, or both you and your guardsmen shall die here. I want you to turn around, return to your city, and send no further force into my land." He grinned, but there was no humor in it. "I knew that it would be only a matter of time before someone like you tried to get rid of me; I'm too much of a liability out here where only your spells and pet fairies can keep an eye on me, yes? The child was just the perfect excuse, wasn't he?"  
  
"You have no power over me," Andelu snarled. "Release my men!"  
  
Illidian's glare became, if possible, colder, and more than a little mad. There was the gruesome sound of rending tendons and shattering bones, and with a fleshy crunch, a young female archer dropped from the air to land on the wide branch below, her neck twisted at an impossible angle. Illidian smiled again at Andelu's look of pure horror. "You just--don't get it, do you? You don't. You have no idea what I am going to do to you if you don't turn around and leave right now, lordling. Save your sorry hindparts now and leave me and the boy to live in peace."  
  
In response, the other elf spat a short arcane phrase and hurled a bolt of sizzling lightning at the grimly beaming sorcerer. His spell encountered some sort of barrier two feet away from its target, however, slamming into an invisible wall and rebounding with a shower of sparks. Andelu took his own thunderbolt square in the abdomen, flying backward five yards before he skidded to a stop, only barely managing to regain his balance in time to save himself from sliding off the giant branch.  
  
There was another snapping and grating, and a tall male elf dropped through a clump of leaves to the ground two hundred feet below. "Wrong answer, Andelu," Illidian chided. "You're starting to run out of chances. Once I've finished up with your flunkies, here, I'll have no one left to play with but you, yes?"  
  
"You'll pay for this, Peridruin!" the lord hissed from between clenched teeth.  
  
"No," the sorcerer corrected, "I already have. I've been paying for almost three hundred years. Now take your men and go." He released his spell, and the remaining eight archers dropped lightly to the branch below. Without bothering to gather up their scattered armaments, they turned tail and fled in the direction of the city, leaving their superior to face Illidian alone.  
  
"I'll be back," Andelu threatened, "with more men, and mages!"  
  
"Technically, since this arm of the forest lies in the foothills of the mountains nearby, I believe that my home is actually on dwarven land. Their tunnels run all beneath and about this section of the Wood, you know." He grinned. "I don't think that they'd take too kindly to an elven assault on any of their citizens."  
  
"You're just spinning moonbeams to try and protect yourself!"  
  
"Oh, no, no, no; goodness no. It's all careful research. According to the pact signed by the local dwarves and your own Council, this land is dwarvish. Now run along before I tell them you're here."  
  
The council lord clenched his fists impotently. "I won't forgive this, Illidian, once of Peridruin."  
  
"You started it, Andelu of A House Not Deserving of Your Dishonor. Now go."  
  
Andelu swirled his cape dramatically as he turned, treading back toward the city even as Illidian went back inside. Dhannathach watched his master as he leaned back against the closed door and shut his eyes with a sigh.  
  
"It's a draw, for now," the familiar said. "He'll make good on his threat, though. Sooner or later, he'll be back, even if it costs him his seat on the Council. You've dishonored him, so now he'll hold even more of a grudge."  
  
"That's his problem, Dhan."  
  
"So you're just going to ignore him?"  
  
Illidian was silent for a moment. Then he said heavily, "Don't worry about him, yes?"  
  
Dhannathach snorted doubtfully, muttering, "Not likely," but Illidian sighed again, interrupting his remark.  
  
"I'll deal with my brother when the time comes." 


End file.
